


Force Multipliers

by Bright_Elen



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Arguing, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Finger Sucking, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oral Fixation, Oral Sex, POV K-2SO, Pining, Polyamory, Robot Cuddles, Robot Feels, Robot/Human Relationships, Threesome - F/M/M, Woman on Top, also featuring, data-driven dirty talk, everyone is bad at feelings, five (5) orgasms, mention of past suicidal behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-08-21 23:01:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16585940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/pseuds/Bright_Elen
Summary: So far, everything was going according to plan. K-2SO gave that another eighty seconds (at most). Only twenty-nine percent of Cassian’s missions had ever gone as planned, and that had beenbeforeJyn Erso had joined the Alliance.





	Force Multipliers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naughty_sock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naughty_sock/gifts).



> naughty_sock, hope you like this! I had a good time figuring out how to fill your prompt! :)
> 
> Shout-out to the [Zalgo Text Generator](https://eeemo.net/), my new favorite writing toy.
> 
> Detailed content notes at the end.

_0.4 ABY_

_Dolva Prime_

The Akhara Plains spread out under the viewport of the U-wing in seemingly endless waves of scrub grass, unbroken by settlements for thousands of kilometers. Here and there, herds of wild ungulates roamed in circuits between water sources, grazing back the plant life that might otherwise obscure much of the rock and crystal formations unique to the planet. The wind rolled over the landscape like a vast creature, but vaster still was the sky, an infinite stretch of pale jade.

K-2SO flew low, closing in fast on a set of speedrails. The planetary Governor, attended by an undercover Cassian and tailed by Jyn, rode the railspeeder approaching from the south. K-2 would make the extraction point in two minutes and thirteen seconds. So far, everything was going exactly according to plan.

He gave it another eighty seconds of that (at most). Only twenty-nine percent of Cassian’s missions had gone as planned, and that had been _before_ Jyn Erso had joined the Alliance. It made him a good operative, being able to improvise, but there were definitely days when K-2 despaired of his analytical capabilities ever really being useful. It wasn’t as if the brass would let him use his other core programming instead.

Up ahead, K-2 saw the last segment of the railspeeder detach and slowly lose momentum. At the same moment, his comm link crackled.

“Kay, there’s been a change of plans,” Cassian said. “Extraction point is now the detached railcar. Stay clear of the rest of the railspeeder.”

It had been seventy-three seconds.

K-2 sighed. “You’re going to blow it up, aren’t you. I’m beginning to doubt that you understand the term ‘recon.’”

“I’ll explain later, Kay,” Cassian said, and then, a second later under his breath, “What the kriff? Jyn?” Then, louder. “I’ll call you back, Kay, I have to call Jyn.”

The comm went silent. In the meantime, K-2 calculated the likelihood that Jyn was on wrong part of the train, found it to be quite high, and started evaluating alternative extraction plans.

Forty seconds later, Jyn called. “Meet me on the roof,” she said, and that was all.

K-2 considered his options. Opening the hatch and flying alongside the railspeeder would pose a technical challenge, but it was low risk to himself and the least risky to Jyn.

Another comm call, this one from Cassian, voice tightly controlled. “You have two minutes before the detonation.”

“Understood,” K-2 said, and changed course to intercept the train from behind. When he was close enough to get good visuals, he saw a small figure slip out of a viewport and start climbing up to the roof of the train.

K-2 opened one of the U-wing’s doors. But as he prepared to fly beside Jyn’s car, he realized that the landscape was a problem. A bank of crystals had risen up into a cliff face on the far side of the rails, effectively creating a wall right next to the train. The reach of the strike-foils meant that even flying as close as possible, the ship would still be beyond human jumping range.

The rails themselves were still on solid ground, so K-2 couldn’t fly below the tracks, tilt the ship, and catch Jyn as she jumped, either. He was going to need another plan.

One minute left. K-2 flew in close, not even two meters over the train roof. Then, the odds of failure rising ever-higher, he put the ship into autopilot.

The wind was whipping the cargo net into a thrumming, snapping thing, but K-2 ignored it as he got some tie-downs, threaded them through his ankles, and clamped them to the deck.

Through the open door, he saw Jyn on the roof, her hair and hood streaming out behind her. She was close enough that he also saw her expression of disbelief turn into one of determination.

Then he turned around, leaned backwards out the door, and dangled upside-down from the U-wing, only his feet and lower legs on the deck. The wind was harsh, working its way into his vents and winding his internal fans the wrong direction, but it wouldn’t last long enough to damage him. The important things were that he had a stable base and could easily see Jyn. He stretched out his arms.

Jyn stood slowly, then gathered herself, took two running steps, and leaped from the railcar. Her face was terrified for the full second she hung suspended in the air, and then K-2 caught her, folded himself around her and up into the ship again, and told the autopilot to pull the ship up and away from the rails.

Meanwhile, Jyn was tangled in his lap, her feet against his shoulder, her face near his hip joint. She twisted around, and then she was upright, legs folded under his bent knee joints, hands on his chest for balance, breathing hard and grinning.

“Good catch.” She looked, K-2 noted, particularly alive at the moment — eyes bright, expression animated, face pale except for her flushed cheeks, limbs trembling slightly. Clearly a product of adrenaline and being outside in cold wind, but K-2 still found the changes in her physiology fascinating.

“Good jump,” he said.

Somewhere below them, the train exploded, the sound distant. Jyn flinched and her expression sobered. “You saved my life.”

“For the fifth time,” K-2 reminded her, and she laughed, her whole body transmitting the vibrations of it into his plating.

“Of course. Well, I think I’m up to, what, seven times saving yours?” Jyn smiled.

“Yes,” K-2 said, much quieter and more sincere than he’d intended. He expected Jyn to laugh or mock him, but she didn’t. Instead, her eyes widened, her expression softened, and then her eyes dropped from his optics down to his vocoder.

Then her face reddened and she abruptly pushed herself into standing.

“Let’s go get Cassian,” she said, and sat down in a jump seat. “Then we can all go home.”

“Yes,” K-2 said, unclamping the tie-downs and wondering if Jyn’s sudden shift had anything to do with his regret that she was no longer sitting in his lap.

Given his experiences with human emotional complications, the odds were high. They were very high.

* * *

Six years and eight months prior to the Dolva mission, Cassian rescued K-2SO from the Empire. Because they had to, they trusted each other with their lives almost immediately.

It took much longer for Cassian to trust K-2 with anything else. A year and five months, in fact, for Cassian to tell him anything meaningful about his past. K-2 might have felt slighted if he hadn’t already learned how rare it was for Cassian to speak about himself at all, past or present.

(He never talked about his future.)

Though it was frustrating at times, K-2 could work with that. By applying his tactical analysis programming to their interactions, he learned how to read Cassian well enough to predict his behavior with eighty-nine percent accuracy. He would have liked a higher rate, of course, but it was still nineteen percent better than humans managed with each other.

By contrast, K-2 had been an open book to Cassian from sixty-seven minutes after his first arrival on an Alliance base (forty-three for Cassian to explain the droid to the generals and make sure no one got near K-2’s personality matrix, twenty-four for K-2 to fail to provoke Cassian into changing his mind about memory wipes). From then on he told Cassian everything, from sharing his data on Imperial codes and logistics, to his personal memories from the time before the reprogramming, to his observations of the Alliance. It took approximately one point six days for Cassian to ask him, for the love of the Force, to _stop_ telling him things unless they were immediately relevant. By the time the brass had calmed down and they were being assigned missions together, there was no subject on which Cassian didn’t know K-2’s opinion.

This remained true for roughly four and a half years. Long enough that, when K-2 developed a secret, he simply continued on as if nothing had changed.

In some ways, it was easy: most people both assumed he couldn’t restrain himself at all and weren’t interested, anyway.

In other ways, it could be excruciating: when Cassian failed to take safety precautions on a mission, K-2’s circuits were overtaken by endless projections of the spy’s probable survival rate, risk of capture, and all the different tortures and deaths waiting for him in such an eventuality. When Cassian was hurt, K-2 deprioritized all other processes in favor of caring for his friend, while any remaining bandwidth was overtaken by a buzzing litany of injuries, diseases and conditions the man had or was in danger of having, the list becoming more and more catastrophic until Cassian was well enough to snap at him to go away.

And when Cassian was well and standing close — when he smiled — K-2 had to monitor his movement commands to make sure he didn’t reach out to gently touch Cassian’s face.

* * *

_0.4 ABY_

Cassian and Jyn sat in front of Draven’s desk, K-2 standing behind them.

“This was a recon-only mission,” Draven said. “And yet now Governor Pikus and the Guildmaster Spero are dead. We know considerably less about their replacements.” He scrolled down a datapad. “The reason you gave was to stop them from ordering the destruction of the mine at Endolva.”

Cassian nodded. “Yes, sir. They’d been planning to stage the sabotage for weeks, as you’ll see in the archives I pulled. Additionally, Lieutenant Erso heard them preparing to detonate the mine’s pressure chambers before their railspeeder arrived in the capitol. Given the intel I’d already gathered on Pikus’ involvement in damaging and then selling protected lands, I judged it better to protect the tens of thousands of workers in the mine than continue with the original mission parameters.”

“It makes our job more difficult,” Draven sighed, “but not insurmountably so. Mothma would have ordered you to do the same, anyway.”

A small amount of tension uncoiled from Cassian, and Jyn sat up a little straighter.

“That being said,” Draven continued, expression hard, “your extraction methods were reckless.”

“That was my fault,” Jyn said, the first time she’d spoken up. She still hadn’t completely adapted to the chain of command — probably never would, which was one reason why K-2 counted her as a friend. “I told Captain Andor about Pikus’ plans, and he told me about the explosives. I had moved to the front of the railspeeder to compensate for the interference the engine was producing in the surveillance equipment, and I knew I wasn’t trapped, so I didn’t tell the Captain until after he’d detached the last car.”

“You deliberately kept information from your superior officer?” Draven asked, voice cold and sharp. Cassian had gone still and silent the way he did when he was bracing for a fight.

Jyn shrugged, the one where she was trying to appear more unaffected than she was. “Not deliberately. He didn’t ask for my position, and I was on my way back to my original post anyway. I hadn’t expected to fight five guards before I got there.”

Draven rubbed his temples. “You understand that operatives are expected to offer critical information without being asked, yes?”

Jyn mumbled something about how it hadn’t seemed terribly critical at the time, but at Draven’s glare came out with a clear, “Yes, sir.”

With a look that clearly communicated Draven’s disbelief that she meant it, but that he would have to accept it until proven otherwise, the General turned at last to K-2. “And you. You’re the one I rely on to keep Andor’s suicidal tendencies in check. I didn’t think I had to worry about you picking up that bad habit.”

When he stopped, K-2 spoke as neutrally as he could. “Sir?”

Sighing yet again, Draven made an exasperated gesture. “I thought your calculations would have indicated that risking yourself and a valuable ship was not worth saving the Lieutenant a painful but non-fatal fall.”

K-2 shifted. “It was only fifty-six percent likely non-fatal,” he said, “based on terrain, speed, and potential points of impact. The risk of permanent injury was seventy-seven point nine percent.”

Draven was not moved. “And what was the risk of significant damage to you and the U-wing during your stunt flying?”

K-2 shifted. He and Jyn had agreed not to disclose the details of the railspeeder rescue. If Draven thought dropping a line was stunt flying, he’d probably lose his composure entirely if he knew how Jyn had actually gotten from the railcar to the U-wing. (Of Cassian’s possible reactions, eighty percent of all scenarios were unfavorable.)

“Eighteen point four percent.”

Draven looked mildly surprised, at least some of his irritation falling away. “Well, in that case, good work saving us the bacta it would have taken to put Erso back together.”

“Thank you, sir,” K-2 said without any sarcasm at all. Cassian darted a glance at him, but Draven took it at face value.

“Lieutenant, you have extra mess shifts for the next week,” Draven informed Jyn. He knew she hated working the mess.

“Yes, sir,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Erso, K-2SO, dismissed.”

Draven often kept Cassian much longer than the others, going over his intel in fine detail, using the spy’s decades of experience and keen observations to get the most out of the data. If he’d been in the field, K-2 stayed for those sessions, too. For this particular mission, K-2 was glad to be sent away.

Out in the corridor with Jyn, K-2 checked Home One’s duty roster. “You’re due at the kitchens in eight minutes.”

She let out an aggrieved huff. “He doesn’t waste time, does he. Bastard.” She peered up at K-2. “Keep me company on the way?”

“Yes,” K-2 agreed. He’d planned to perform maintenance on his chassis and then check over what the pit crew had done to his ship, but both tasks could easily be delayed a few minutes.

Jyn wasn’t much for talking — another point in her favor — so it was in a comfortable silence that they moved through the ship’s corridors. It wasn’t until they were several turns away from Draven’s office that she gave K-2 a sideways look and cleared her throat.

“Yes?” he prompted after a moment.

“You said the odds of losing you and the ship were under nineteen percent,” she said, looking straight ahead and walking with more tension in her muscles than necessary. “What were the odds of losing you _or_ the ship?”

K-2 considered the relative merits of telling her the truth versus deflecting. Unless she deemed it a critical subject — and was this critical in her eyes? K-2 didn’t know — she would likely accept a deflection.

What did he have to lose if he told her outright? She wasn’t likely to go to Draven with the information, even if it could somehow get her out of kitchen duty. It might make her uncomfortable enough that working together would be problematic. The idea set off a flurry of processes devoted to limiting the possibility.

“Kay?” Jyn prompted. “I know you already calculated it.”

Seventeen of the twenty-one possible scenarios in which he gave a straight answer ended in K-2 successfully repairing his friendship with Jyn. Furthermore, ten of the fourteen possible scenarios in which he deflected ended with her angry with him for at least two weeks.

K-2 braced himself. “Ninety-five percent.”

“What?!” Jyn stopped in her tracks and pulled on K-2’s arm to get him to stop, too. “Are you karking serious?”

He sighed. “It was sixty-eight percent risk to the ship. You are more important than a U-wing.”

Color rushed to Jyn’s cheeks, and her mouth worked silently. K-2 couldn’t discern which emotion had caused that, but after a moment she shook her head as if to remove a physical impediment and spoke again. “And that leaves, what, twenty-seven percent risk to you?”

“Twenty-seven is significantly lower than forty-four. In fact, on all of our joint missions, my risk of catastrophic damage has been lower than yours,” K-2 said, and wagged a finger in Jyn's face. “You can hardly blame me for trying to mitigate the consequences of your choices to keep running into the line of fire.”

“Don’t blame this on me!” Her voice was definitely raised now, face still flushed, aggressive tension in every line of her body. K-2 didn’t understand why. “I didn’t ask you to risk your life for me!”

Unimpressed, K-2 blinked. “No? How was I supposed to have interpreted ‘meet me on the roof,’ then?”

“I was expecting you to throw me a line like a reasonable person, not put the ship on autopilot and dangle yourself out the open door!” Now one hand was fisted at her side, the other flung broadly out. “Tell me, what were my odds if you’d been sensible?!”

“I can’t believe _you’re_ lecturing _me_ on being sensible,” K-2 said, louder than he'd intended. Maybe his circuits were getting a little warm.

“What were the odds, Kay?” Now she’d crossed her arms over her chest.

She was right that he already knew; he’d calculated those odds along with all the others, even before putting the ship into autopilot.

“They were comparable to my own risk,” he said, and started walking again.

Jyn dashed out and blocked his path. “The numbers, Kay.”

K-2 could have picked her up and carried her the rest of the way to the kitchens with only the effort of restraining her flailing limbs. He could have turned around and walked away. He could have simply stood silent until she had to leave or be late for her shift.

All of those carried unacceptably high chances of Jyn refusing to speak to him for various periods of time.

“As stated earlier, your risk of dying from an unassisted jump was forty-four percent. Dropping a line would have reduced that to thirty-one percent, but the maneuver I executed posed only twenty-six percent risk.” He paused. She was still staring at him with an aggressively questioning expression. “For the same scenarios, my risks of permanent shutdown were three point five percent, fourteen percent, and twenty-seven percent.”

One she’d processed that, Jyn’s face went white. “You mean you nearly _doubled_ your risk of death to reduce mine by five percent?”

K-2 shifted his weight. It certainly sounded preposterous when she put it like that. She didn’t have all the data, of course, but he’d already calculated her likely responses to receiving that information, too, and they were even worse than their current predicament.

“I think it’s significantly in my favor that neither of us sustained damage,” K-2 said instead of explaining that she meant almost as much to him as Cassian did.

Jyn drew herself up, tremors in her hands, and spat, “I can’t believe you sometimes.” Then she turned on her heel and stalked away.

K-2 didn’t finish analyzing possible responses before she was out of sight.

* * *

_1.7 BBY_

_Ord Biniir_

The mission went so wrong that K-2 very nearly didn’t get to Cassian in time to keep his extensive injuries from killing him. As he carried Cassian to the nearest safe house — his processors churning out projections of each injury’s probable rate of infection, nerve damage, and fatality — he used the last of his strength to turn his face towards K-2’s as best he could and speak.

“Kay,” he said, half-delirious from blood loss and barely able to breathe through his broken ribs, “if I don’t make it...you’re the one who keeps me warm.” The fingers of his uninjured hand gripped Kay’s arm tightly. “I’d be so cold without you. Just...take care of yourself.”

Then he passed out, leaving K-2 alone with the statement and his rapidly-deteriorating vital signs. He calculated the risks of running the remaining distance versus waiting longer to give Cassian medical attention, and sped up. Even unconscious, Cassian groaned in pain as the motion jarred his broken body.

The sound was like a wave of static discharge in Kay’s central processor.

Once at the safehouse, it took an hour of constant work to stabilize Cassian. Another two days before K-2 was willing to move him again, and then several hours of travel to the nearest base with full medical facilities. After his surgeries, Cassian was weighed down with bacta patches, antibiotics, and opioids, and it was more than a week later before he was able to hold a conversation again.

That was a lot of time for Kay to think. Enough to review all of his memories of Cassian, his behaviors, the various contexts of them, the patterns. Enough to research human behavior and language, read excerpts of poetry and novels, watch holovids. He eventually narrowed it down to four possibilities.

One: in his delirium, Cassian hadn’t been capable of giving his words meaning. K-2 calculated a thirty-one percent chance of this being true.

Two: Cassian had meant it literally and was thanking K-2 for helping him maintain his fussy organic body temperature. While possible, it didn’t correspond to the fact that while Cassian failed to care for himself in a multitude of ways, he was actually reasonable when it came to wearing appropriate environmental protection.

Three: Cassian had meant it figuratively to indicate feelings of friendship. It wasn’t like him to wax poetic, but then, he had been convinced (they’d both been convinced) that he had a good chance of dying, and that often changed people’s behavior, leading K-2 to calculate a sixty percent chance of being true.

Four… The fourth possibility, though it had only a two point six percent chance of being true, buzzed like a faulty connection in Kay’s circuits,  demanding his attention and re-ordering his priorities. He was always invested in finding out the outcomes of his predictions — it was impossible to refine his algorithms without that data — but confirming this hypothesis had become of secondary importance only to the man’s well-being and K-2’s own independence.

Because, four: Cassian had been trying to indicate romantic feelings. If that was true—

If he currently harbored such feelings—

Well. K-2 had known he was in love with Cassian for fifty-four days, and he’d spent all of them trying to find peace with the likelihood that his feelings would never be reciprocated. He’d even made some progress in that area, which made the current scenario even more disruptive.

But if his feelings were reciprocated…

Kay had only wild speculation about how he and Cassian might behave towards one another in a romantic relationship, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to find out.

Eventually, Cassian woke up lucid again. He squinted at the light in his face, holding a hand up to block it. After a moment he looked at the hand itself, examining the cast that was holding his healing bones in place.

“Good morning, Cassian,” K-2 said, vocoder modulated to a quieter volume than normal. “You have two fractured metacarpals in your right hand, torn ligaments in your right shoulder following a dislocation, fractures in your sixth and seventh ribs on the right side, a concussion, numerous bruises and scrapes, a split eyebrow, third-degree blaster burns on both legs, and four stab wounds in your abdomen, one of which penetrated muscle and your large intestine. You contracted sepsis from that intestinal wound. The doctors don’t yet know if you have nerve damage in your hand, but they are optimistic. All of your injuries are in treatment. You are not to get out of bed at all for another five days, and then will be on incredibly light duty for the next month. I am prepared to enforce this.”

“That’s too long,” Cassian said, shaking his head, then froze, grimace of pain on his face as he brought a hand to his temple. After a moment he relaxed a little and let out a long, shaky breath. “Well. Maybe not.”

K-2, generously, did not voice his well-founded skepticism that Cassian would be a good patient for the entire prescribed period.

“Are you hungry or thirsty?”

Another long breath. “Water would be good.”

K-2 pinged the nearest medical droid with a request for water. Less than a minute later, they appeared with a small pouch in hand and passed the tube to Cassian. After a brief examination — including another recitation of Cassian’s ailments and treatments — the med droid left, leaving them alone again.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” K-2 asked.

Slowly, Cassian turned to look up at Kay. “You carrying me to the safe house.” He thumped K-2’s leg with his good hand. “Thanks for saving my life again.”

“You might show your gratitude by requiring it less often.”

Cassian’s mouth twisted, not quite amused, not quite bitter. “You could just stop. Wouldn’t be your problem for much longer.”

If he hadn’t been concussed, K-2 might have slapped him. “I’m not letting you get out of it that easily,” he said instead. “At this point you owe me twelve rescues, and I intend to collect.”

Though the expression had an edge, Cassian was smiling. “Guess we’re stuck with each other, then.”

The strength of K-2’s positive response to that made his processes stutter. “Do you remember what you said while I was carrying you?”

All at once, Cassian’s face and voice went blank. “No.”

K-2 considered how to respond to the obvious lie. It eliminated the possibility of his statement being meaningless — Cassian had pride in some things, but was no longer embarrassed by injury or incapacitation, so he wouldn’t have minded telling K-2 he’d just been spouting nonsense.

If he’d been embarrassed by the phrasing...but Cassian wasn’t showing signs of embarrassment: he had no flush, wasn’t trying to hide his face. Instead, he’d gone still but very alert, heart and respiration rates increasing, tension in his jaw. He was afraid.

Cassian wasn’t, as a general rule, afraid of friendship: K-2 had seen him display affection and camaraderie with other Rebels on numerous occasions. That eliminated all but one of the possibilities.

Cassian was afraid of his own romantic feelings for K-2.

That...hurt? K-2 was fairly certain he was hurt by that. Eighty-six percent. Cassian had let Kay see him at his lowest (which, being a spy on the losing side of a war, was alarmingly low) but he didn’t trust him with this? Had Kay ever done anything to warrant such a lack of confidence? He tasked thirty percent of his processing capacity with re-evaluating his own behavior towards Cassian, just to be sure.

At the same time, he looked down at Cassian lying in the bed, at the wounds that had almost killed him. The infections that, if not properly treated, still could. The brain injury that might fatally slow his thinking or reflexes. Together they were an accumulation of damage that scared K-2 in a way he rarely was. In all their years together, K-2 had only known one other time Cassian had been so close to death.

The Jenoport mission had been even more alarming because Cassian hadn’t been injured at all. Before, he’d dismissed suicide as an extreme expression of the messiness that seemed to plague organics in almost every aspect of their existence, and maybe it was, in a general sense. But seeing Cassian crying and staring at his blaster had made Kay realize that emotional distress could be just as dangerous to humans as physical damage. When he reviewed his memories, he also realized that Cassian had sustained an enormous amount.

With that in mind, did Cassian’s feelings for Kay cause him distress? Or was he afraid of the pain he would feel if their relationship failed, or if Kay managed to keep Cassian alive longer than himself?

There were so many things Kay couldn’t save him from. But by accepting the lie, he could spare Cassian this fear, this pain.

It wasn’t as though K-2SO really knew what he was missing, anyway. He was a droid.

“I’m not surprised,” K-2 finally said, many computing cycles but only a few seconds later. “You were quite delirious. Hopefully you still remember enough of the mission to debrief.”

Cassian relaxed. In response, satisfaction and sorrow pulsed through K-2’s circuits in equal measure.

* * *

_0.4 ABY_

After a complete systems check, cleaning and lubrication of his joints, and a standard defrag cycle, K-2 began looking over the U-wing. The organic techs had, once again, changed the settings on the pilot’s side of the console to better suit beings with shorter arms and longer reaction times. Typical.

He was almost done recalibrating the steering when Cassian knocked on the hull of the ship to announce his arrival.

“I’m beginning to think that no one understands plain Basic,” K-2 complained. “My settings are right there in the ship’s records, but do the techs listen? No, of course not. Clearly they are the best judges of how a pilot interacts with the controls.”

Cassian sat in the co-pilot’s chair and started checking over his side of the console. Most of those settings were his and had been left in place, but a few were K-2’s, designed to take advantage of his arm length and the way he and Cassian worked together best. Their configuration wouldn’t make any sense to an outsider, though, so they’d been changed to match the rest of Cassian’s settings. Cassian didn’t comment, just changed them back.

He didn’t respond to K-2’s scathing indictment of the techs, but he didn’t ask him to stop, either.

After they’d finished the initial re-calibration, K-2 went about testing the controls.

“Thank you,” Cassian said as they ran through a simulation. “For keeping Jyn safe.”

K-2 turned to face him, but Cassian was focusing on the simulation, or pretending to. It was very uncharacteristic of him to thank K-2 for completing mission objectives, and K-2 projected a number of possible motivations. He didn’t come up with anything remotely conclusive.

“Of course I did,” K-2 said, going with his emotional response for lack of a more reasoned option. “Were you expecting me not to?”

Cassian frowned at the console. “No, I knew you would.”

K-2 huffed, “Then why thank me?”

The simulation ended. K-2 made two small changes to the controls. Cassian sat motionless. K-2 started another simulation.

After two minutes of silence, K-2 concluded that the question had provoked thoughts and/or feelings in Cassian that he would rather not be having, and assumed the conversation was over.

But as soon as he'd thought it, Cassian spoke. “I imagine the odds you gave Draven, while true, weren’t the whole story.”

K-2 rolled his optics. “Not you, too.”

Cassian gave him a sharp look. “What does that mean?”

“Jyn wasn’t too pleased with how I handled the situation,” Kay seethed, and only then realized he was angry. “As if she has any room to talk about taking risks.”

Cassian was staring at him now. “What risks?”

“She’s perfectly happy to throw herself into danger without any forethought whatsoever, but when I make a calculated decision that balances risk in a way she doesn’t like, _I’m_ the unreasonable one!” K-2 gestured as emphatically as he could in the tight space. “She only complained _after_ she was safe.”

“What risks, Kay?” Cassian said again. He was so tense that everything about him was held close, including his voice. He didn’t get like that often — or at least, he hadn’t before Jyn — and K-2 could have tried to de-escalate.

He didn't.

“I chose to rescue Jyn in a manner that set her risk of death at twenty-six percent and mine at twenty-seven,” Kay said, and watched Cassian frown, but he didn’t stop. “I could have chosen a method that set hers at thirty-one and mine at fourteen, but I didn’t! Maybe I’m tired of being the sensible one! Maybe I prioritized her safety over my own! It doesn’t matter, because it was my choice to make!” He threw his hands in the air, then stood. “And then you come in here to thank me as if I wouldn’t have done it anyway, or as if it was a favor to you!”

Contrary to his expectations, Cassian didn’t explode in anger. Instead, he was looking at Kay with some strange mix of emotions that K-2 couldn’t identify. Something bittersweet. “You’re a good friend, Kay.”

“You’re incomprehensible sometimes,” Kay muttered, and stalked, as much as he could while negotiating doorways, out of the ship.

* * *

None of them talked about the fights. Instead, Jyn and K-2 kept a sullen snappishness, and Cassian seemed even more melancholy than usual. K-2 was getting tired of it, enough that he’d begun thinking about broaching the subject, when they were assigned another mission together and personal conflicts ceased to be a priority.

The contact was supposed to meet the Rebels in one of the seedier cantinas in one of the rougher cities on Manpha. Most of the planet was a swamp, which put K-2 in a bad mood from the start. The contact’s last-minute message that she didn’t negotiate with men (or even, they found out after some terse messages, masculine droids) only made it worse, especially since neither he nor Cassian was happy to be sending Jyn in by herself. K-2 would be right outside, skulking in the back alleys, and Cassian would be stationed on the roof of the building across the street, but Jyn seemed to be the only one who wasn’t worried. Meanwhile, she was still angry with K-2, and her coldness made K-2 sharper than usual and put Cassian on edge.

It was no surprise that the three of them spent most of the flight there bickering.

“Your cover. Again.” Cassian said flatly as they broke atmo and came in for a landing.

“I’m Iris Darran,” Jyn said, an eye-roll audible in her voice, “a mercenary who bounces around the system looking for work, though I avoid the big gangs. I heard our friend Penta Menaraeve knew some local guerrillas hurting for extra muscle, so on behalf of my crew,” she recited, gesturing to Cassian and K-2, “I’m here to negotiate services and price.” She rattled off the market rates for six different kinds of mercenary work, three common ways to exchange funds, and tips for going unnoticed by Imperials. “I also play the valachord in my spare time and enjoy long walks on the beach.”

“Funny,” Cassian muttered, but didn’t comment. K-2 grudgingly admitted, if only to himself, that she knew her cover well enough for a single meeting. If anything, she probably knew more about being a mercenary than either of them did.

After they landed, K-2 got out of the pilot’s seat to inspect Jyn’s gear. Her tracker was stuck to the underside of her belt, an earpiece hidden under her hair and the folds of her cowl, and she carried a tiny camera embedded in one of the fasteners on her jacket. K-2 checked the functionality of all of it, only satisfied once he’d seen for himself that they were in good condition and networking properly with his own wireless connections and Cassian’s comm link.

“If things go bad, your priority is extraction.” Cassian’s face was stony. “Find the exits as soon as you get in.”

Jyn’s mouth twisted — K-2 could almost hear her retort about knowing her job — but she relented. “I’ll be careful.” She moved to the ship’s hatch, pausing on the threshold. “You boys too, yeah?”

“I will,” K-2 said, giving Cassian a pointed look, which he ignored.

“We’ll be close if you need us,” Cassian said instead.

"May the Force be with us," Jyn answered, and disappeared into the night.

Well, only to his optics. The tracker showed her position on the map, and the camera gave him nearly the same perspective she herself had. The audio was transmission-only, so the feed was silent, but if she really needed to talk to them, she had a standard comm link as well.

Once she was far enough ahead, he and Cassian moved out and got into position. The first half hour was boring: just K-2 folded into a corner between a trash receptacle and a cooling unit behind the cantina, watching Jyn’s hands and her drink, comming Cassian every five minutes to relay the exciting fact that nothing had happened yet.

At minute thirty-two, however, Jyn got up, taking her drink with her, and sat down again at a table wedged into the corner. The woman already sitting across from her was an ageing Bothan eyeing the human with suspicion.

K-2 told Cassian that Jyn had made contact. As Jyn talked, K-2 watched the woman’s expression, which kept remarkably steady for an organic. She’d only lost the slightest edge of hostility five minutes into the meeting.

A chair crashed into the wall right above the Bothan’s head, and Jyn was pulling the table over to use as cover before K-2 could see if their contact had been injured or not. The camera afforded only a view of the scarred and grimy underside of the table.

“Get out of there as soon as you see an opening,” K-2 told her, and stood. He could already hear the roar of the fight from the outside. He switched to Cassian’s channel. “There’s a fight. I’m going in through the back.”

“Watch your back. I'll be ready.”

Most of K-2’s processes were focused on helping Jyn, but the remaining ten percent reflected on Cassian's lack of objection to K-2 going in without knowing for sure if Jyn needed him.

Inside, Jyn’s camera feed had gone from crouching behind furniture to swinging wildly as she beat multiple attackers with her batons, felling one after the other. But one caught her with a well-timed punch because there were just too many of them for her to handle them all. It was only a matter of time before another one got in a better hit. That was unacceptable.

K-2 broke down the last internal door, stepping into chaos. He clotheslined the trandoshan who ran towards him, ignored the being who broke their hand on his pelvic cradle, and waded towards the corner where Jyn was, at this point, trapped.

Early in their working relationship, K-2 had realized that he would have to prioritize Cassian's safety, because the spy himself certainly didn't. It was absurd, because Cassian couldn't very well complete any more missions if he were dead, could he? But he never failed to berate K-2 for ‘compromising mission objectives’ anyway.

Another human, this one moving like a Stormtrooper but wearing garishly bright civilian clothes, was getting ready to sweep Jyn’s legs out from under her when Kay caught up. He grabbed the man by the back of the neck, dragged him backwards, and threw him to the ground. A stomp to his solar plexus removed him as a threat, and K-2 went about neutralizing the attackers Jyn hadn’t gotten to yet.

Cassian's behavior towards Jyn, K-2 reflected, had been singular from the start. When she’d been an asset, he'd treated her as an ally. Then she skipped over the ally stage altogether and they'd been acting like comrades who'd been fighting alongside each other for years. So was Cassian's behavior regarding the bar fight even really about K-2, then, or was it about her? Possibly both, but K-2 knew that he hadn't been running these analyses before.

More brawling. There came a moment when Jyn caught his eyes, grinned, and diverted a duros mercenary’s momentum just enough that he stumbled into K-2’s reach and went down under a blow to the head. K-2 had never run combat programming to work with someone else before, and he found it fascinating enough that he tried tripping a gamorean to fall towards Jyn instead of simply crushing his windpipe, and was delighted to watch Jyn catch their opponent’s face with her knee.

While K-2 hadn't been happy about Cassian extending trust to Jyn before she'd proven herself, he’d had to admit, if only to himself, that Jyn had deserved that trust.

After that, the two of them worked in a sort of belligerent dance, sharing opponents and covering for one another; once, Jyn even linked elbows with K-2 to whip around behind him and deliver a powerful kick to the stomach of a man about to attack K-2 with a vibroblade. Even their significant height difference proved to be an advantage when Jyn could retreat to the safety of K-2’s reach without blocking his lateral range of motion.

She'd given K-2SO a blaster. She'd given Cassian a different way of looking at the world.

After eighteen opponents but only three minutes, they stood alone, some of the bodies on the floor groaning, some still. K-2’s cooling system was on high. Jyn was breathing hard and wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth, but she looked savagely pleased.

K-2 realized that he would gladly endure any amount of yelling if it meant he could keep doing this with her.

“There’s a fifty-four percent likelihood that there are Imperials out front,” K-2 said. “Better to leave through the back.”

Jyn nodded, and they picked their way through the mess of broken furniture and bodies. They were almost to the broken doors when a figure in an Imperial officer’s uniform appeared in them.

“You are under arrest,” the man said in a perfect Core accent. “Stop now or be subject to force.”

K-2 leaned down, scooped up part of a table, and brandished it in front of them both, pulling back to swat the man aside with it.

“Kay, get down!” Jyn screamed, pointing at the glowing device in the officer’s hand, but it was too late. An excruciating wave of energy wracked K-2’s systems milliseconds before he lost all awareness.

* * *

“...thought about giving him a hoverlift?” Jyn was saying, somewhere above K-2. She sounded breathless. “Force, he’s so heavy.”

“You wouldn’t have to move him if you’d jumped out of the window as soon as the fight started,” Cassian snapped, also above him. K-2’s optics, along with most of his other functions, weren’t back online yet. Just his reboot sequence and his auditory receptors.

In addition to his humans’ voices, K-2 also heard a heavy scraping sound. Inwardly he cringed. There was a high chance they were dragging him along the alley, grinding maker knew what sorts of grime into his chassis.

His vocabulator came back online. “Could you, perhaps, not drag me through filth?”

“Oh, thank gods,” Cassian whispered fervently.

“Are you alright, Kay?” Jyn said. “Your eyes are still dark. Did you…”

“I am still rebooting,” K-2 said. “I will be able to assess damage in a few minutes. About the dragging.”

Cassian sighed. “We’re still too close to the cantina. We need to get away quickly. Until you can walk again, this is the only choice.” True, given the weight of his chassis and the awkward distribution of it when he was inert.

Still.

K-2’s wireless connection came back, as did full access to his memory banks. He opened the cache of Jyn’s camera feed.

Through the limited perspective, he saw himself fall, Jyn rushing to his side instead of taking cover. That was foolish of her. He didn’t approve of that. Especially when the Imp grabbed her by the collar, held her at blasterpoint, and marched her out front of the building where there was a speeder and another Imp waiting. The one in the speeder started digging out binders. Before he got them on her, the one with a blaster to her head abruptly fell to the ground, a pool of blood spreading out underneath his head. A second later, blood exploded all over the inside of the speeder. Jyn dashed back into the cantina, starting dragging K-2 by herself, and was joined, two minutes later, by a stone-faced Cassian. The camera went dark for a few seconds as Cassian crowded into Jyn’s space, presumably checking her over for damage, and then both humans turned to K-2’s chassis.

As K-2 was processing this, his motor control processes came back online. “Stop. I can walk again.”

The humans stopped, and though his optics were still booting up, his gyros were fine, and he levered himself into a standing position. “I can’t use my own optics yet, but Jyn’s camera and the tracker should be sufficient until I can,” he told them. “Let’s go.”

His internal sensors were online, so he felt the secondary vibrations of Cassian thumping his chest compartment. “Stay close. Both of you.”

Jyn huffed, but she did as instructed. As they moved quietly through the streets, the rest of K-2’s systems finally coming back online, and he learned that he’d sustained damage to his secondary gyros (not a problem for basic movement, but would render him vulnerable in combat), his cooling system (meaning he couldn’t sustain long periods of strenuous activity before he would need to shut down to avoid overheating), his antennae (shortening his comms range), and his ballistics database (rendering him only as good a shot as the average organic). None of it was immediately threatening, assuming he didn’t need to fight again before he could be repaired.

Of course, that was when they spotted Imperials up ahead. They all turned down an alley, moving to another street, but that one had a checkpoint, too. The neighborhood appeared to be on lockdown.

Cassian cursed under his breath.

“Do you think that's for us?” Jyn asked in a low tone.

Cassian pursed his lips. “It's too quick to have gotten word about the ones I sniped. Maybe someone they wanted was involved in the bar fight.”

“Either way, they'll be looking for a rogue KX,” K-2 sighed. “Loathe as I am to leave you to your own devices, your chances of getting through the checkpoint are nineteen percent higher without me.”

“That's not happening,” Cassian said through gritted teeth.

“How could you even think we'd leave you?” Jyn hissed.

“What alternative plan would you propose? Putting me in a robe and hoping no one notices my feet?”

Jaw set, Cassian scanned the street, then nodded subtly in the direction of a large block of residential units. “That kind of housing usually has interior access to sewer tunnels. We’ll go under the street, come up on the other side.”

“There are a number of reasons that’s a terrible idea,” K-2 said. Like the fact that spending time moving to the building, finding a way inside, and getting to the tunnel access would expose them to the many residents of such a structure. And the various diseases Cassian and Jyn would be exposed to in a sewer, not to mention the water damage that K-2 might sustain.

“Have you got a better one?” Jyn asked, still cross.

K-2, unfortunately, did not. He sighed. “When something terrible befalls us, I’m going to be extremely ungracious in saying ‘I told you so’.”

* * *

He did not, it turned out, tell them so. They made it into the building without incident; once Cassian bribed the guard, nobody cared who they were or what they might do in the maintenance areas.

The sewers were exactly as disgusting as K-2 had feared, but they emerged less than fifty meters from their ship and were able to get clean immediately after jumping to hyperspace. Their survival with minimal damage helped clear the air between them, and they made their way back to Home One without further bickering. They even agreed on what to include and omit from their mission reports, saving themselves (and Draven) unnecessary grief.

However, it was a fragile peace.

“You shouldn’t have waded into the thick of the fight,” Jyn admonished K-2 as they were making their way towards crew quarters. “Cassian was right, I should have gone for a window, but you should have stayed outside.”

“Excuse me?” K-2 said, emotion getting the better of him again and creating interference in his voice. “I incapacitated eleven hostiles in the bar, only three of whom needed to attack at once to overwhelm you.”

“If you hadn’t been there, I would have been more careful,” Jyn said, glaring. “It was hardly my first bar fight.”

Cassian, glancing up and down the corridor, went to a door, opened it, and herded Jyn and K-2 inside. It was a storeroom, just shelves and crates, and they were the only ones there. K-2 decided that privacy probably was a good idea, so he went a step further and sliced the lock on the door.

“You could have fooled me,” K-2 said, turning back to loom over Jyn. “Running towards me instead of taking cover after I went down was a terrible idea.”

Jyn’s mouth snapped shut and her face reddened. Cassian gave her a sharp look, like he wanted to berate her as well, but the unidentifiable emotion was there again too, and he remained quiet.

“Kriff you,” Jyn spat, throwing her arms out in front of herself. “I’m only human! I can’t help it if seeing my friend fall like a sack of bricks made me act without thinking!”

Her words gave K-2 a feeling of disequilibrium in his chest casing, like a flaw in his gyroscope, but that only increased his recalcitrance.

“That’s your problem,” K-2 said, voice humming with frustration. “Quite a lot of things seem to make you act without thinking!”

“Oh, and you always choose the logical, calculated option, do you?” Jyn said. “Like dangling yourself out of the U-wing?”

“What?” Cassian said, and stepped close enough to grab K-2’s lower arm. “You did what?”

Kay made a disgusted noise. “The numbers I told you were fine, but the specific maneuver is a problem?”

“Yes, because it means you both kept information from me!” Arms spread wide, it seemed as though Cassian was finally blowing up.

“I gave you the most relevant information. You'll need a better point than that.”

“Not everything is about numbers,” Cassian hissed, then, perhaps sensing that his argument was entirely irrational, he turned to Jyn. “And I _still_ can’t believe you changed your position without telling me! That was incredibly dangerous—”

“You’re the _last_ person who gets to lecture me on recklessness—”

“Both of you are astounding hypocrites,” K-2’s vocabulator was much higher in volume than he typically used. “I analyzed each situation, made predictions, and chose the balance of risk I found most acceptable! That’s far more thought than either of you two ever put into your stunts!”

Jyn, glaring, grabbed Kay’s arm. “Just because we can't quantify our decisions down to the last decimal doesn't mean we have no judgement!”

“I never said you have no judgment. I said you have poor judgment.” He turned back to Cassian. “Anyway, you still haven't explained your sudden change of heart. Or have you conceded that your objections are completely unfounded?”

“That’s not…” Cassian started. Then tried again. “Kay…”

Kay waited, but Cassian couldn’t — or wouldn’t — find the words he wanted.

“No, please, don’t feel obligated to actually communicate your thoughts or feelings,” Kay said, acerbic. “You never do.” Before Cassian’s reaction progressed beyond hurt, Jyn had grabbed him again.

“Hearing about you hanging from the U-wing probably took a few months off his life!” she cried. “Seeing it took a couple of years off mine!”

“Watching you jump wasn’t fun for me, either, if you’re wondering.” Kay's internal temperature was rising as his components struggled to process his anger. “Or watching you get punched, or almost mobbed, or nearly shot in the head, or the hundred other times you’ve been in danger! You don’t have the high ground in this argument!”

“Shut up!” she hissed. “Shut up and listen! What I’m trying to say—”

“Is it anything new?” Kay scoffed, bending at the waist to get closer to Jyn’s level. “You’ve been repeating the same ineffective arguments—”

Jyn’s nostrils flared, and then she grabbed Kay’s shoulders, hauled him down the remaining distance, and collided with his vocoder lips-first.

Kay froze. Jyn was close enough for his chemical sensors to pick up the salt of her sweat and the artificial florals of the base’s standard-issue shampoo. For the first time, he regretted the lack of tactile sensors in his head assembly, having to imagine what her skin felt like. Soft, of course, humans were so soft. And warm, too, though not as warm as he was now, with his elevated emotions and his damaged cooling system. To feel her he could have used the sensors in his hands, but at the moment he wasn’t quite processing movement commands. Maybe it was because Jyn’s sensory input was overwhelming. Maybe it was the fact that he had no protocols for such a scenario.

Maybe it was because he knew the significance humans gave mouth-to-mouth contact.

“ _That’s_ what I’m trying to say!” Jyn said once she pulled back, the anger in her eyes now tempered by worry.

Kay’s optics flickered. “Oh.” He finally brought a hand up to Jyn’s face, fingertips brushing her cheek, her expected warmth and softness almost shockingly pleasant to touch. When he spoke, there was wonder in his voice. “I see.”

A ragged breath from Cassian, not quite a gasp and not quite a sob, drew Kay’s attention. Cassian’s face had crumpled and he was turning to go.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Jyn said, and released Kay to take Cassian by the arm. Cassian tried to shake her off, but she darted out in front of him, grabbed him by the front of his jacket, and before he could push her out of the way, kissed him, too. Cassian was stiff at first, but Jyn didn’t relent, and after a moment he softened, arms coming up around her, pulling her closer, lips moving against hers.

Kay felt...well, he wasn’t sure what, but the sight did activate enough new processes that he really should have started to worry about heat damage.

When the humans came up for air, Cassian looked at Jyn in mingled desire, sadness, and confusion. “Both of us?”

Jyn steered Cassian backward until he was pressed against Kay. “ _All_ of us.”

The longing Kay had felt for years resurged, but this time, it was accompanied by hope. When Cassian twisted around to look up at him, he was apprehensive, yes, but there was a reflection of that same hope in his eyes, too.

“Go on, then,” Jyn said, and put Cassian’s hand in Kay’s. “I’m not blind. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other.”

Kay looked at their clasped hands, then at Cassian and the naked fear, sadness, and want on his face.

Bending down, Kay spoke softly. “I’d be cold without you, too, you know.”

Eyes going wide as he drew in another stuttering breath, Cassian leaned up, still holding Kay’s and Jyn’s hands. Kay’s visual input seemed to increase in resolution, letting him see in very fine detail Cassian’s mouth changing shape and his eyelashes fluttering as he closed his eyes. His auditory sensors registered every wavelength of Cassian’s quiet exhalation as he pressed his lips to Kay’s vocoder; they even picked up Cassian’s wild heartbeat.

This time — was Cassian maintaining contact longer than Jyn, or was Kay just getting better at processing kisses? — he was able to bring his free hand up to cradle Cassian’s face before the kiss ended. Cassian’s fingers tightened around Kay’s, and joy surged through his circuits.

When Cassian broke the kiss, he leaned into Kay's palm and opened his eyes. He didn't flinch or look away or try to pull back, just met Kay's optics and let him see his joy and his fear, and, by doing so, how much he trusted Kay.

The years of worry had been worth it, Kay decided, if they’d led to this.

After another moment, Jyn nudged at Kay’s hip. “Sit down so we can stop craning our necks.”

Kay obliged, lowering himself onto a crate, and then Jyn was sitting Cassian at an angle in the space between Kay’s legs. She herself perched sideways on Cassian’s lap, smiling as Kay cautiously placed a hand at her waist and the other on Cassian’s shoulder. Cassian’s heart and respiration rates were elevated, and he looked overwhelmed.

“Don’t worry,” Jyn murmured, tipping Cassian’s face up towards hers. “I’m still furious with both of you.”

Cassian laughed, the sound resonating in Kay’s chest compartment. “Why is that actually reassuring?”

“Because it means she cares, and also you find her anger soothingly familiar.” Kay squeezed Cassian’s shoulder. “You should kiss her again.”

“Well, if the tactician says so,” Cassian said, mouth curved in a faint smile. Then his hand came up to Jyn’s face and he pressed his lips softly to hers. This time she responded to him, letting him keep the kiss soft and slow at first. And when Cassian made a noise deep in his throat and pulled her tighter against his body, Jyn hummed and opened her mouth wider, inviting him in. Soon they both had white-knuckled grips on the other, heartbeats hammering and body temperatures rising.

They weren’t the only ones. Kay hadn’t ever been interested in sexual activity before, but Jyn and Cassian kissing each other into arousal was complicating the droid’s processes with unexpected pleasure, his systems overclocking. He wasn’t entirely sure how it was happening, but that seemed irrelevant at the moment. Recording the kiss and slowly caressing Jyn’s back and Cassian’s waist were what concerned him now.

Eventually the humans pulled apart, foreheads resting together, catching their breath. After a moment, Jyn peered up at Kay through her disheveled hair.

“It’s not fair,” she said, voice rough, “that we’re out of breath and you’re perfectly calm.”

“‘Perfectly calm’ is not how I would describe my current state.”

“Whatever. You’re still not flustered.”

Meanwhile, Cassian had leaned back, blown pupils now tempered with wicked intentions. Even so, he was supremely gentle when he pushed Jyn’s hair out of her face and curled his fingers around Kay’s wrist.

“He can’t feel touch on his face, or most of his plating, really,” Cassian explained, tugging Kay’s hand away from his waist and up between him and Jyn, “But he has plenty of sensors in his hands.”

“Why are you telling her — o̷͟h̢” Kay said, last word warbled unsteadily, as Jyn had begun sucking one of Kay's fingers.

The term made it sound like a simple action, and maybe to humans it was. But for K-2SO, the warmth and moisture and unprecedented softness of Jyn’s mouth were several completely new sensations at once, sending a torrent of data through his systems, his processors trying to keep up only somewhat successfully.

As she saw what her actions were doing to him, Jyn grinned around the durasteel in her mouth, hummed — setting off another flurry of processing, which in triggered a hitch in Kay’s cooling fans — and pulled back, only to adjust his hand to an angle that allowed her to pull two of his fingers into her mouth. Her lips pressed against his longest segments just below the ring joints, tongue cradling the digits, and her eyes flicked between Kay’s optics and Cassian’s face.

“Kriff,” Cassian breathed, his own gaze locked onto Kay’s hand in Jyn’s mouth.

“Mmm,” Jyn agreed, and then released Kay's fingers, now slick with her saliva. "That was a good idea."

Cassian licked his lips, color rising to his cheeks. "I'd been thinking about it."

Kay's fans whined.

Jyn reached out to caress Kay's face, though she kept looking at Cassian. "I think we can do even better," she said, and reached behind herself for Kay's other hand. Her own finger was resting on Kay's as she guided them both into Cassian's mouth.

Cassian moaned and seemed to meld himself impossibly closer to both Jyn and Kay, steadying their hands in both of his own, and that was a new experience, too, not just having Jyn’s finger next to his inside Cassian’s mouth, but the way he moved differently from her, how his mouth was slightly larger, how he sucked harder than Jyn had, and especially how he pulled them all the way in, as deep as he could, like he was trying to somehow merge their three bodies together, physical impossibility be damned.

“Oh stars, Cassian,” Jyn whispered, and then, though she was starting to breathe hard again, pulled Kay’s hand back to her lips.

“W̛a͟it̴,” K-2 said, the word humming beyond his control. It was taking two hundred and fifteen percent more processing power than usual to produce spoken language. He’d never been so overclocked with stimuli before, couldn't make projections of possible outcomes. “In the interest of communication and risk management, I feel obligated to point out that while I find the chances of damage to be a͜c̴cep̕tab̶l̸ę, I don’t know what will happen if you continue. I haven’t done or even simulated anything like th̨i̛s҉   before.”

Cassian pulled off and gave Kay a concerned look. “Then we’ll wait. At the very least, we should fix your cooling system first.”

Already the stimuli-induced data torrent was slowing. “Yes.” He paused. “As much as I would like to throw caution to the wind, melting components would be counterproductive.”

Jyn brought his knuckles to her mouth and kissed them. “Knew you’d be sensible eventually.” Then she guided his arm around her and leaned into his chest, tucking her face against his neck. Cassian did the same, and then they were all holding each other.

K-2 had never seen any organics assume such a position and didn’t know if it was at all comfortable, but the humans didn’t seem to mind. That was fine, Kay decided. He liked feeling their body heat slowly seep into his plating, the way their breathing moved them in tiny rhythmic shifts, and having the time to analyze their different chemical compositions.

There was also time for his processors to keep generating predictions, even more now that he had firsthand measurements of the human's skin and mouths, but also fueled by his extensive human biology databases and experiences with Cassian’s medical history. He couldn't stop calculating just how little pressure it would take to break their bones or tear their skin, how little fluid was required to drown them, how quickly they would freeze and suffocate in hard vacuum.

“If it were logistically feasible,” Kay murmured, arms tightening slightly around Jyn and Cassian, “I'd never let either of you out of my sight again.”

Jyn hugged him tighter. “That's a lovely thought.”

At the same time, Cassian squeezed his hand. Face still hidden against Kay's chest, his voice was low and charged with emotion. “There are so many promises I wish I could make to both of you.”

Jyn stroked his hair. Cassian leaned into the touch, even if he still couldn't meet anyone's eyes.

“This is more than I ever thought I’d get,” Jyn said, a slight tremble to her voice. “That’s something, isn’t it?”

After two of the humans’ respiration cycles, both Kay and Cassian said, in unison,

“Yes.”

* * *

Calculating how to maintain Cassian and Jyn's safety in while in a varitey of intimate positions was relatively easy, just a matter of physics. K-2 even measured the density and elasticity of the standard-issue mattress to make sure his calculations were as accurate as possible.

Fluid compatibility was also fairly straightforward: the oil K-2 used to lubricate his joints was slightly astringent to human skin, just as human sweat, saliva, ejaculate and vaginal fluids were all, to varying degrees, mildly corrosive to metal. Gloves and condoms made of inert synthetic materials would prevent fluid damage on all sides of the equation.

The biological risks Jyn and Cassian posed to each other also required attention.

“You've already seen my files, haven't you?” Cassian had said gruffly, face flushed and shoulders tense.

“Jyn’s the one you need to talk to.”

Turning, if possible, a deeper red, Cassian waved a hand as if to dismiss the subject. “Go ahead and show her whatever she wants to know.”

“What about what you want to know about her?” As per the medical files, K-2 knew Cassian had been sterilized as soon as he was of legal age to consent to the operation, so he wouldn't be worried about contraception; but that still left the risk of disease. Was caring even that much about his own health too much to ask?

“Just...whatever she's willing to share.”

Apparently, it was. “You're impossible,” K-2 said, and left the room.

Later, it was rather refreshing that Jyn poured through the Captain's medical files with a fine-tooth comb, once K-2 had assured her Cassian preferred that to a conversation.

“And he really didn't ask anything about me?” Jyn said with a frown. “Bloody stupid, if you ask me.”

“I agree, but Cassian agreeing to take any precautions at all is growth for him,” Kay sighed. “Perhaps with both of us to work on him, we can speed up the process.”

Jyn smiled crookedly up at him. “Not everyone makes a project of their partners, you know.”

“And? Don't tell me you're not going to try to get him to be more careful with himself.”

“Point.” She closed Cassian's files and opened her own. With a few taps, she'd sent them to Cassian. “There. Now he won't have to talk about it, that ridiculous man.”

“Thank you.”

That left K-2SO with the difficult part of figuring himself out. On the holonet, he researched droid sexuality (a previously unexplored topic that proved just as messy and frustrating as he'd feared). While most of the organics were sleeping, he ran as many different stress-test simulations of both hardware and software. Once he was convinced it was at least seventy-four percent safe, he decided to experiment.

Replaying his memory file of that evening in the storeroom, he came close to overload. Then, he played his second copy of the file out of time with the first, effectively able to layer the sensations and simulate what had almost happened: both humans stimulating his fingers simultaneously.

The overload was intense. He was glad he’d used Cassian’s room to test it, and also that he’d set up an external camera to observe his physical reaction. He needed to know if he was going to be dangerous when out of control.

Gladly, it seemed that he wasn’t: from the outside, overload looked like his chassis shaking from the activation of all of his servos, limbs and posture returning to a point of equilibrium that required no power to maintain, and then a reboot.

Satisfied, K-2 sent a message to Cassian and Jyn to let them know his preparations were complete.

* * *

It was awkward until it wasn’t.

After K-2’s preparations, they still had to wait a few days until their schedules matched up. And then, all of them were nervous enough that it looked like no one was going to make the first move.

“At least sit down,” K-2 suggested, and then placed himself at the foot of Cassian’s bed. “Perhaps we can ease into it.”

Cassian took Jyn’s hand and sat as well. She remained standing. Cassian didn’t try to move her, just started massaging her hand in both of his. She smiled and ran her free hand through his hair.

“It’s so soft,” she murmured, tucking the ends behind Cassian’s ear. “Softer than mine, anyway.”

Cassian met her eyes, and brought her hand close, kissed her knuckles. “I like your hair.” Then he kissed her wrist. “And your skin.” Trailed fingertips up to her face. “And your eyes.”

“All of your features are aesthetically pleasing,” K-2 agreed.

Jyn smiled, then situated herself between them on the bed, leaning back against K-2, pulling Cassian towards her. K-2 readjusted himself to prevent any hard edges from pressing into her, and began stroking both humans’ hair. They stayed like that for a while, and then K-2 trailed his hands downwards, one to Jyn’s collarbone, one to the nape of Cassian’s neck. Both humans’ respiration rates increased, and Jyn pulled Cassian closer still until their lips met.

The kiss became heated quickly, and K-2 followed, newly-repaired cooling system working to keep up with his interest in their kissing. Cassian leaned further forward, half on top of Jyn, and K-2’s hands moved lower still, down to the humans’ waists. He only kept still for a moment before coming back to Cassian’s neck, tracing his jawline, surprised and pleased when Jyn’s hand overlapped his.

They pulled apart briefly, just long enough for Jyn to start working her fingers into the fastenings of Cassian’s shirt. He helped her, undoing the placket, then tugging it out of his waistband. K-2 took over from there, pulling the shirt off entirely, and then Jyn’s mouth was on Cassian’s chest, sucking bruises into his skin, and Cassian’s fingers were in Jyn’s hair, and he was whispering her name over and over.

K-2 didn’t stop touching Cassian’s back, and he enjoyed the sensations of bare skin against his plating, warmth and softness, the pressure increasing when Jyn leaned into Cassian, decreasing when she pulled back. She moved lower, put a hand on Cassian’s belt and trousers. “Let’s get you out of these.”

“Hang on,” Cassian murmured, gently taking Jyn’s hands in his. “Jyn. Come back up here.”

She sat up straighter, pulling her hands back to smooth her hair back. “You don’t...I mean, aren’t we…”

“Hey, no,” Cassian said, and held her face tenderly. “I want you. I want this. It’s just…” his eyes dropped to the side.

In the previous several days, K-2 had had time to do more research. He’d gathered data about human sexuality, analyzed trends, and had even made some predictions about his humans. Cassian’s current behavior increased the likelihood of some of those scenarios.

“There’s a ninety-four percent chance,” K-2 speculated, “that he wants you to sit on his face.”

“Kay!” Cassian hissed, looking mortified.

“What?” K-2 said. “Is that not the correct terminology?”

Jyn was ducking her head again, though not so much that she couldn’t also look at Cassian. “Is he wrong?”

Mouth opening and closing, Cassian said nothing.

K-2 heard the faint sounds of Jyn swallowing. She leaned in close to Cassian, a hand on his chest, and when she spoke, her voice was low, dark. “Is he right?”

Cassian licked his lips, eyes locked on Jyn’s. “Yes,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

Jyn’s heartbeat sped up, and she dove in to kiss Cassian. He melted under her touch, fingers curling around her jaw, her shoulder, opening his mouth to her, moaning low in his throat as she deepened the kiss.

This time, K-2 let Jyn push Cassian onto his back, kissing him breathless as she went, his hands on her waist. She kept kissing him until they were both moaning, temperatures elevated, breath coming fast.

“You’re still wearing too many clothes,” Jyn said at last, and started to get up.

“You are more fully dressed than he is,” K-2 pointed out. “Would you like assistance?”

Jyn turned to him, lips curled in half a smile, face flushed from arousal, pupils dilated. “Yeah.”

She stepped closer, and K-2 carefully loosened her shirt from her trousers, undid the closures, slowly pulled it over her head. Cassian had raised himself up on his elbows to watch, and licked his lips as Jyn’s shirt was removed entirely.

K-2 set the garment aside, then moved to her waistband. The trousers were easy enough to unclasp, and then they were sliding down her hips. Jyn leaned on K-2’s shoulders to steady herself as she stepped out of them. As she did, her  humid, musky smell reached K-2’s chemical sensors, and the input triggered another surge of processing. He was still struggling to issue motion commands when she turned around so that he could better reach the closures of her supportive undergarment. The line of her spine was fascinating and lovely, and K-2 couldn’t resist tracing his fingertips down the elegant curve.

Jyn shivered, and Cassian bit his lip. K-2 collected himself enough to navigate the tiny hooks.

Well, almost. One of them broke with a loud crunch between his fingers, startling both humans.

“Sorry.”

Jyn grinned at him over her shoulder. “I’ll take it as a compliment.”

Then she eased the bra off, and Cassian’s pupils dilated even further. “Can I?” he said, voice a low rumble, gesturing to her only remaining piece of clothing.

In answer, Jyn stepped close to him and threaded a hand into his hair again. Cassian raised up to caress her hips and kiss her belly, reverent in how gentle he was. Jyn’s breath hitched, and Cassian kissed her again, on the other side, and then hooked his fingers into her underwear, pulling the stretchy fabric down slowly, kissing each centimeter of exposed skin as he went. He went down to the middle of one thigh before he let go, letting the panties fall, and then placed another kiss directly below Jyn’s navel, then one slightly below that, and another, until his lips landed on hair.

“Cassian!” Jyn gasped, and tugged reflexively on his hair.

The noise he made ran through every single one of K-2’s processors. Jyn let go, breathing hard, and had to wait a moment before she spoke. “I’ll fall over if you do that while I’m standing.”

Cassian raised his eyes to hers. “However you want.”

Jyn’s eyes flashed, and she bit her lips again. “Get naked first,” she said.

Cassian complied, with K-2’s help, and then he was sitting on the bed, warm and erect. Jyn stared, and then became determined, surging forward, pushing Cassian back again.

“Promise you’ll throw me off if you can’t breathe,” she said, scooting up until her ankles were hooked under Cassian’s biceps.

“I will ensure his safety,” K-2 said, because he could see Cassian about to say something upsetting. Cassian, thankfully, took the hint and kept his mouth shut.

“Alright then,” Jyn said.

Cassian slid his hands up Jyn’s thighs to her hips, then pulled her down. They moaned in unison when (presumably) his tongue found her clitoris, and Jyn sagged, hand against the wall of the bunk for support, Cassian’s hold on her ass keeping her steady.

K-2 knew that there was probably no good viewing angle, but that there were at least better ones, so he came up onto his knees, then, very carefully, moved forward until he was straddling Cassian too, right behind Jyn.

“Kriff, Kay,” Jyn breathed, and leaned back against his chest plate, which was wonderful, because her body against his was wonderful, and also because he could see the upper part of Cassian’s face if he looked over Jyn’s shoulder. She flailed an arm behind her, found his hand, and dragged it to her hip. Once he’d grasped her and become fascinated by the particular density of her flesh, she found Cassian’s hand and put it on top of Kay’s. His eyes fluttered open as their fingers made contact, and all three of them moaned together.

It was several minutes of wet sounds, heavy breathing, and Jyn working her hips; several minutes of moaning from both humans, interspersed with higher-pitched whines from Jyn that became more frequent until Cassian brought her to orgasm. Kay held her steady as she shivered and cried out. He and Cassian both rubbed soothing circles on her hips, and then after her breathing had returned to normal, Cassian resumed his work. It wasn’t very long at all before Jyn was climaxing again, louder this time, with more violent spasms, and then she was tapping at Cassian’s hands.

“Enough,” she panted, and Cassian stopped. “Oh gods, Cass…”

K-2 moved back. Jyn raised up on wobbly thighs, leaning heavily on the wall, Cassian watching her in adoration. Once she got both legs to the same side of the bed, her eyes raked down Cassian’s body.

He was still hard.

“I really want to kriff you,” she said, “but I’m not sure I can move right now.”

“You could lie back,” Cassian suggested.

Jyn shook her head. “Don’t like being underneath.”

Cassian slid a hand up her side. “We can wait, then.”

Kay considered, then put his hand on Jyn’s other hip. “Or Cassian and I could move you.”

Jyn’s mouth fell open, and Cassian inhaled shakily.

“Yeah, okay,” she said faintly.

With Kay’s help, Jyn straddled Cassian again, pausing to kiss his chest, and then lowered herself onto his cock. She groaned in pleasure, fingers tightening on Cassian’s shoulders. “You feel so good, Cass.”

Kay was close enough that he could see the praise make Cassian even softer and more open than he already was. “You too,” he said, voice wrecked. “Kriff, Jyn, you feel amazing.”

Kay positioned himself behind Jyn again, this time with both hands on her hips. It took a few attempts before they’d found the most pleasing grip, angle, and depth of motion; once they did, Kay rolled Jyn’s hips over Cassian in a simple rhythm, all his priorities re-ordered until he was only aware of the current moment, the sounds each of his humans were making, the feel of skin under his fingers, the way Cassian made an effort to regulate his breathing. The moment when Jyn tensed up, hissed “faster, harder,” then climaxed a third time with a long, deep moan, clutching at Kay’s arm and scratching Cassian’s chest. Immediately after, when, half-limp and delirious, Jyn said, “keep going, Kay,” and, “Come on, Cass, show me what you’ve got,” and “come for me, darling,” and he did, Cassian covered Kay’s hands with his own over Jyn’s hips and thrust up into her, strong enough to make her bounce, crying out her name and Kay’s and hers again.

After that, Kay eased Jyn onto her side next to Cassian, and they lay in each other’s arms for long moments, panting slowing to normal rates, skin cooling until Jyn groped for a blanket, Cassian’s lips pressed to Jyn’s hair and her fingers tracing slow aimless shapes on his chest.

Roughly a quarter of an hour later, K-2 decided that it was a good moment for the humans to replenish their fluids, and handed a canteen to Cassian.

Cassian laughed, but still drank. “Thanks, Kay.”

“You’ve been very helpful,” Jyn agreed, then accepted the water. After she returned it to Kay, she smirked at Cassian. “I think we should show our appreciation, don’t you?”

Cassian grinned. “Absolutely.” He extricated himself from Jyn, got out of bed, and circled around to Kay. Kay’s optics followed him, recorded the fine details of his movement, the affection and only slight apprehension in his eyes. His fingers, larger and blunter than Jyn’s, passed gently over Kay’s arms and shoulders. Kay could feel Cassian’s body heat pass over the semi-exposed sensors in his shoulders, and detect Jyn’s scent still lingering on his face.

“Cassian,” Kay murmured, arms coming up around the human. Cassian paused to kiss one of Kay’s metal palms, the slight pressure sending frissions through his circuits, and then he slid around behind Kay, kneeling on the mattress so he could wrap his arms around Kay’s shoulders and nuzzle at the articulations of his neck. His chest pressed against Kay’s back, covering one of his heat vents. Feeling Cassian so close was new, somewhat overwhelming, and entirely welcome, and he let himself enjoy it for a full minute before redirecting his cooling system to avoid excessive temperatures there.

“That’s a pretty picture,” Jyn said, getting up, and then lounged across Kay’s lap, eyes working their way up his chest. “Think I’ll appreciate it from here.”

Cassian hummed in agreement and reached down to take one of Kay’s hands. He didn’t, as Kay had anticipated, bring it to his own mouth, but instead offered it to Jyn. Low fire in her eyes, she leaned forward and closed her mouth around his index finger, flooding his sensors with wet heat and softness, garbling his processors with how good it was.

A moment later, Cassian shifted against his back. “Stop me if you don’t like this.”

Kay intended to ask what he meant, but then a shock of pleasure ran through all his systems from his antennae downwards, and he made an embarrassing sound that was half keen and half radio interference.

Cassian pulled his mouth off Kay’s antennae. “Was that a good noise or a bad one?”

“G̛o̸͞o͜͟d,” Kay said, still overclocked. “Pļea̵s͡e c҉o̡ntinue͟.”

Cassian did: not just licking and sucking, but nibbling, too, and using his lips to pluck the heavy wire to send vibrations straight to Kay’s central systems. Jyn was still stimulating his fingers, and it wasn’t long before the sensory input seemed to transform all of K-2SO’s circuits and processors and even memory files into a single circuit of pure euphoria.

He was three steps into his reboot process before he was aware of rebooting. Another several before his core connected with his hardware and he could perceive that Cassian and Jyn were both curled around him, talking softly to each other as they waited for him to wake up.

“Welcome back,” Cassian murmured into his auditory sensor. “Everything okay?”

Kay wrapped one arm around Jyn and used the other hand to cover Cassian’s. Their skin was still the same fragile membrane around delicate muscles, blood vessels, bones. They were safe for the moment, but in two days there was a mission, and one or both of them might die. It hurt to think of how little time they might have together, especially after all the months and years they'd wasted figuring out their feelings.

K-2 did not find any of that 'okay.'

But — and maybe the overload had given him a glitch, or maybe it was leftover euphoria — that didn’t bother him for the moment. For the moment, Cassian and Jyn were with him, happy and whole, sharing intimacy and affection.

“Yes,” he said. “Everything is favorable.”

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: heights, a memory of suicidal behavior, a bar fight, semi-graphic descriptions of Imperials dying by sniper, our trio arguing because they aren't great with communication or feelings. Also this story is 17.2% smut, all in the last section starting with "It was awkward, until it wasn't." Non-smut resumes with "he was three steps into his reboot process."


End file.
